MARKET CLOSE NZ shares up, Genesis debut sparks energy rally

April 17 (BusinessDesk) – New Zealand stock
rose after shares in the partially privatised Genesis Energy
soared as much as 18 percent in its debut listing on the
NZX, buoying other listed energy companies in the process.
Meridian Energy, MightyRiverPower, Contact Energy and
TrustPower paced gains.

The NZX 50 Index rose 12.799
points, or about 0.3 percent, to 5103.348. Within the index,
22 stocks rose, 17 fell and 11 were unchanged. Turnover was
$149.6 million, which excludes Genesis, which is not part of
the index as yet.

Genesis climbed 17 percent to $1.81 from
its listing price of $1.55, giving holders of the 49 percent
that was sold an immediate gain of about $135 million. Over
$143 million worth of shares traded hands in the IPO
process, which attracted 68,000 retail investors, giving
Genesis the third largest share register on the NZX in a
largely scaled offer.

“The
final mixed ownership IPO has ended with a real bang for
investors,” said James Smalley, director at Hamilton
Hindin Greene. “ nA number of institutions saw the writing
was on the wall with regards to demand for Genesis stock
versus the amount of stock that was on offer and realised if
you were underweight in that sector and expecting to correct
your weightings with the Genesis IPO that wasn’t going to
happen so we did see a bit of buying.”

Stock market
operator NZX fell 0.8 percent to $1.24 as the government’s
public listing of assets came to an end.

Tech stocks,
hammered in recent days, showed some recovery. Diligent
Board Member Services, the governance app maker, led the
benchmark index higher, up 6.7 percent to $4.75. Pacific
Edge, the biotech company, rose 1.7 percent to $1.17 and
Xero, the cloud-based accounting software firm, gained 3.4
percent to $29.00.contaThe tech stocks gained as the
“market perceived that it was a little overdone on the
downside regarding the well-publicised switch out of growth
stocks into more defensive ones,” Smalley said. “As well
as that, the sell-off overseas in those sectors has
abated.”diligXerioAmong tech stocks outside the
benchmark index, GeoOp, the small business task management
app maker, jumped 22 percent to $1.61, Wynyard Group, the
software security firm, rose 1.7 percent to $2.44, and SLI
Systems, the search engine developer was unchanged at
$1.97.

Air New Zealand fell 0.2 percent to $2.07.The
national carrier says claims against it as part of a class
action lawsuit in Australia over alleged price fixing on
freight have been withdrawn and the airline won’t be
contributing to an A$38 million settlement by other
airlines.

The Wellington-based BusinessDesk team led by former Bloomberg Asian top editor Jonathan Underhill and Qantas Award-winning journalist and commentator Pattrick Smellie provides a daily news feed for a serious business audience.

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